A coaching partnership can help you discover the real stuff you are made of and help you create the life you want to live, to your specifications. It’s within your reach – believe it!
Veronica’s Journey
Veronica, an online strategy consultant, business owner and its chief executive, wanted to streamline business planning and prospecting. In particular, she wanted to cultivate and strengthen her personal and professional networks and capture her business operation methodologies.
Having built a successful Web consultancy over 15 years, Veronica’s impulse to clarify vision and direction for both her business and consulting expertise, became a pressing need in light of increasingly sophisticated industry demands. Her marketing plans and business development initiatives were dependent on the clarity of a new vision. It was to be based on a refined understanding of the uniqueness of her approach and methodology.
As coach, my objective was to support Veronica in an in-depth strategic planning process examining business, professional and personal stakeholder perspectives to help her clarify her vision, strategic direction, roles and relationships to create an enhanced sense of work-life balance and improved quality of life.
Process: We scheduled one-hour executive coaching sessions on a regular weekly basis for a period of 10 weeks with assignment and fieldwork scheduled after each call that would help Veronica translate her insight into knowledge through action and embed the action-learning model.
Results: Veronica reframed her situation, clarifying the roles, functions and relationships that come together to create her work-life context to align with her strengths, values and vision, re-positioning and leveraging her business so it would work for her and enhance her quality of life.
She writes “Julia’s process for life and executive coaching has done wonders for me. Setting weekly goals and tracking my progress has made me realize how much I actually can accomplish to move forwards on my aspirations.
Understanding and applying energy management techniques has helped me better manage my stress, by focus and my health. I am now very confident in and deeply grateful for the guiding system of my leader within. I was able to identify my stumbling blocks, understand why they happened and find a way around them. Now that I have charted my course and it’s aligned with my values, my goals and desires, I feel like there is no stopping me. I’m fully charged and centered.” February 11, 2010
Veronica Reflects on the Coaching Process
Having gone through the coaching process on a personal level two years earlier, I expected it would help me focus on my pressing business objectives, which included identifying what I envisioned for myself and my business within the larger context of industry possibilities. Also, I needed to settle these questions so I could move forward strategically and with confidence in developing marketing materials and pursuing new business.
Creating Focus
Julia helped me clear a path through all of the issues, questions and concerns that inundated me so I could focus on tasks and activities that would bring clarity to my vision.
Julia is an exceptional active listener, who would capture the essence of what I revealed and feed it back to me succinctly. She posed provocative questions that forced me to delve deeply and define my terms. She was flexible in accommodating my schedule, which allowed me the time I needed to focus, contemplate and materialize my insights.
Top Three Learning Highlights
- Recognizing the distinctions between my roles as business owner, CEO and senior consultant for my company enabled me to focus on my strengths and structure my business accordingly.
- Rediscovering the importance of thinking strategically both as the owner of the business and as its lead consultant: i.e. what’s good for the business versus what’s good for the professional consultant who also has needs, desires, preferences and aptitudes that are separate from the business needs and requirements.
- Distinguishing between what I am able to do, what I ought to specialize in, what I would most enjoy focusing on and what I’m best at. Understanding how these intertwine and how to segment them.
Coaching Impact
“Julia, to me you are like a beacon of light shining down the rabbit hole of self-exploration. You are extraordinary at understanding the interconnection of business and personal values and objectives, as well as the strategies needed to meet these. As an independent worker, it certainly builds confidence being coached by someone who also knows what it takes to create, lead and manage projects and people. You have an innate sense for identifying your client’s mind frame and helping them shift it so they can comfortably focus on the essential. Thank you.”
About Julia von Flotow
